2021 COMBAT Funding: $100,000.00

In The Hickman Mills Coalition's Own Words

Program Summary 

The project provides supportive services for students at high risk of violence or affected by violence between 12 – 20 years of age and their families who are from the Universal, Selected, and Indicated populations to the Hangout within Hickman Mills School District's Burke Academy. Students are reffered by the school district, KCPD South Patrol, Youth Court and Family Court.

Due to Covid-19, the students are being assigned to Hope Hangout for virtual and physical support every day of the week (with the exception of Sunday) through the school year and four days a week during the summer. The hours Monday through Friday are 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and noon to 3:00 p.m. on most Saturdays. Hope Hangout offers academic support, mental health support, youth leadership development, parenting classes and mentoring, and a safe space to dwell daily in South Kansas City.

Partners

The partnering agencies are Hickman Mills School District, KCPD South Patrol, Youth Court, Family Court, First Call, Crittenton, Hickman Mills Prevention Coalition and COMBAT, the funding source and technical support agency.

Hope Hangout will be the host of youth development initiatives such as Youth For Change, Students Overcoming Life's Obstacles (S.O.L.O.), LOTUS Project, Sons of Dunia, as well as the re-entry initiative for our most vulnerable youth population that is returning to the community from detention centers or other facilities. 

Providing A Safe Place

In an attempt to address the numbers of juvenile crimes that were happening as well as the aforementioned concerns in South Kansas City, it was agreed that an answer to some of these crimes could be thwarted if the community could provide safe space and resources for the young people in South Kansas City and their families, who were affected by or contributed to the high rate of violence in the area. It was the belief among the stakeholders that had been brought together to find solutions, that providing an option for alternative after school activities that offers skills training, leadership training and supervised recreation would potentially contribute to a lower rate of crimes and loitering in the area.

Risk Factors

South Kansas City experiences a multitude of risk factors that affect the overall success of its students: 

• the high rate of crime among teens in South Kansas City
• extreme violence in the middle school
• overwhelming access to marijuana and other illicit drugs
• high violence in families
• inadequate social and safe spaces for youth
• high rates of students in alternative academic settings
• a rising rate of teen pregnancies in the high school students 

Violence In The Schools & The Community

While we have worked feverishly on minimizing the number of physical altercations at the high school, the violence still tends to spill into our community parks and neighborhoods. Those incidents also lend themselves to adult/youth altercations in the community. There was an incident where a number of teens were in a dispute, and the mother of one of the teens struck several of the disputing teens with a vehicle. These examples are a result of a breakdown within the community and its sense of relationship. 

We are facing our issues with the middle school with a myriad of actions, and Hope Hangout has been asked to work on as many solutions as possible to address this issue.

Goals

1. Increase community involvement in positive, healthy behaviors
2. Decrease youth crimes by 10%
3. Increase youth engagement in community issues and activities
4. Increase opportunities to serve the most "vulnerable" youth in our community; including those who may not be enrolled in the school system in our community. 

Hope Hangout's intermediate goals and outcomes will be as follows: 

• Through Youth For Change, community town hall meetings and other community rallies, we intend to increased community involvement in positive, healthy behaviors and decrease in risky behaviors as well increase youth engagement in the community.
  
  
• Through referrals and assessments with youth and their families, we expect to decrease youth crimes by 10%.
  
  
• With the development of the partnership with HMSD, our goal is to continue to reduce disciplinary actions among young people in the community.

Working With Most Vulnerable Students

Hope Hangout is offering programs and opportunities through the aforementioned, as well as working with KCPD South and HMSD on an ongoing basis, to develop additional ways to address our issues, such as working directly with Burke Academy, our alternative programs campus, to work more hands-on with our most vulnerable students.

To create an opportunity for pro-social involvement and develop healthy beliefs and clear standards for behavior, Hope Hangout serves as a refuge space for the teens who either can not or do not feel safe going home right after school as well as a hub for several youth programs and experiences throughout the school year and the summer. By creating opportunities to develop positive relationships with adults through programs such as Youth For Change, LOTUS Project, Sons of Dunia, Teens in Transition, Y.O.L.O. (Youth Overcoming Life's Obstacles), and the 4-H Futures program, Hope Hangout is providing protective factors for individuals, families and the community overall.